Corruption Weekly: 8-12 January

January 9, RBCtold
about Russians who bought Maltese citizenship. Among them are full namesake of founder and co-owner of Yandex, Arkady Volozh, owner of O1 Properties investment and development company, Boris Mints, co-owner of ICT Holding Ltd, Alexander Nesis and his family members, largest vodka producer in Russia and Beluga Group co-owner, Alexander Mechetin, landowner Igor Khudokormov, chief managing director and deputy chairman of the board of Alfa-Bank, Alexei Marey, owner of development company FGC Leader, Vladimir Voronin, top managers of Kaspersky Lab, director of the gold mining company Polyus, Pavel Grachev, top managers of Huawei, Candy-Hoover Group and many others.

Since 2004, 730 well-known Russians have become citizens of Malta. To purchase a Maltese passport, one should invest at least € 880,000 in the economy of the country, excluding commissions and fees.

On the same day, Znak.compublished
a text about an ice town in Kurgan. Local authorities have spent 6 million rubles for children’s entertainment, but local residents doubt that the budget money was spent properly. The problem became obvious after a seven-year-old boy suffered a serious spinal injury. After this incident, the Investigative Committee initiated a check. Later, it turned out that the boy was not the only victim, as several children had already been injured as well.

In addition, the ice objects look much more primitive than they were supposed to be, illumination was not installed at all. "The certificate of delivery of works indicates that all ice sculptures are made in accordance with the design, and elements of the ice town meet safety standards and do not create emergency situations," the publication notes.

On January 10, Sobesednik (Interlocutor) came out with a text
about another dacha of President Vladimir Putin registered in his friends. The residence of 1339 square meters is located in a village of Voznesenye, the Leningrad region. According to the newspaper, it officially belongs to main shareholder of Rossiya bank, Yuri Kovalchuk.

Ten years ago, businessman Taymuraz Bolloev said that he had closed his real estate mutual fund Baltika, connected with Kovalchuk, and was going to create a network of yacht clubs through the company Laguna, writes Sobesednik. It was planned that the clubs would be located on Ladoga and Onega lakes, including in Voznesenye village. Headquarters of Laguna company is located in Igora ski resort partly belonging to Kovalchuk.

Since 2010, the land that was supposed to be given to the yacht club was taken over by Prime
company established by the non-commercial partnership "Support of entrepreneurial initiatives" of Kovalchuk and his son Boris. Now the territory is illegally enclosed by a fence, and yachts are prohibited to moor alongside it.

Also, find our top investigations of the last year in a special report
involving texts about property of Valentin Matvienko, St. Petersburg governor Georgy Poltavchenko, as well as stories about a fire in Rostov-on-Don, strong psychotropic drugs, Ukrainian Berkut, participants in the murder of the Yamadayev brothers, and many other.